"Rocky, wild and unpredictable" — why Baja California is ideal offroading country

Gripping the roof handle and staring silently over the dashboard, I avert my gaze from the 160ft drop to my left. There’s just six inches of dirt road standing between us and the cliff edge: one wrong move from our driver, and the pickup truck we’re in is going straight into the Sea of Cortez.

The first time I visited Mexico’s Baja California, the world’s second-longest peninsula, it was on a backpacking trip through Central America. I hitchhiked and bussed over 650 miles from Tijuana, on the border with the US, to Todos Santos, just short of Baja’s most southerly point, Cabo San Lucas. Travelling along the Carretera Transpeninsular, I stopped at every major town along Baja’s main highway, wine-tasting in Ensenada, whale-watching in Guerrero Negro and swimming with sea lions on Espiritu Santo Island.

During those long drives, I’d stare out at the stark desert landscape for hours: salt-encrusted greasewood shrubs and giant cardón cacti sprouted from swathes of sand and clay-red mountains, which often turned candyfloss pink at sunset. But what caught my eye were the narrow dirt tracks, hundreds of them crisscrossing the desert like a map drawn in the sand, veering off the highway towards sun-baked sierras and hidden turquoise coves. One day, I thought to myself, I’d return to Baja California to see where those roads led.

Five years on, I’ve come to La Paz, in the south of the Baja California peninsula, to join Baja Expeditions’ first-ever overlanding trip. The company has specialised in whale-watching, kayaking and wild camping in the state since the 1970s, but has recently branched out with off-roading tours to encourage visitors to explore the peninsula’s less-visited interior.

“People think Baja is just beaches and whales,” says our driver Mike Thorneycroft, a Canadian who moved to Baja California in 2020. “But it’s more than that. These trips are about getting people out of the resorts and into Baja’s least-visited communities, and learning some of their history and culture.”

Mike gets us past the cliff edge safely, manoeuvring around asteroid-sized potholes and boulders with ease as we climb up and over Sierra de la Laguna, part of a mountain range that connects Baja California Sur, the southern state of Baja California, with southern California in the US. 

On slightly wider roads, I start to relax and take in the views: unlike the parched desert I’d seen from the highway years ago, these mountains are lush from recent hurricane rains, flourishing with lime-green mesquite trees and pink and yellow wildflowers. We cross arroyos — dry riverbeds that fill up after heavy rainfall — flowing with crystalline water, where orange butterflies and free-roaming piglets from a nearby ranch are taking a drink. A vulture and a flaming red cardinal bird join soon after.

“Baja California is perfect for off-roading,” says Mike, who organises and competes in long-distance off-road rallies across the state. “The roads are rocky, wild and unpredictable, changing quickly in the rainy season. But that’s what makes it exciting.”

Near the former silver-mining town of El Triunfo, we stop at the Santuario de los Cactus, a community-run garden with some of the oldest and rarest cacti on earth, including the cardón, the world’s largest cactus. The garden’s grey-moustached volunteer caretaker, Guadalupe ‘Lupe’ Gonzalez, shows us around, pointing out which cacti fruits are edible and how to extract water from their flesh. He also shows us cacti species used to treat kidney stones, stomach aches and open wounds.

“I learnt about the medicinal properties of cacti from the rancheros (ranchers),” says Lupe, caressing the spines of a 400-year-old cactus as if they were whiskers. He’s been caring for the plants here for more than 30 years and offers guided tours of the garden for a small donation. “But this knowledge comes from the Indians. There are none left here now, but we know how to survive in the desert because of them.”

Before the Spanish arrived, Baja California was inhabited by three major Indigenous groups: the Cochimí, the Guaycura and the Pericú. Ancient rock paintings in Sierra de San Francisco, around 465 miles north of where I am and described by UNESCO as some of the most impressive collections of rock paintings in the world, suggest that these tribes had lived on the peninsula for at least 10,000 years. 

Although the Spanish colonised Baja California much later than Mexico’s mainland, around the late 17th century, the culture and history of these local Indigenous groups was erased more quickly than in the rest of Mexico. Some experts believe this is because the region’s Indigenous groups were nomadic hunter-gatherers, who lacked the big cities and societal structures that helped preserve the legacies of the Mayans and Aztecs in other Mexican states. Today, very few Indigenous groups remain, with most living in the north of Baja California.

After a few hours of driving along the spectacular Barriles Santa Teresa coastal road, we make the steep descent to Palo Blanquito beach, where we’ll be spending the night. It’s a wild strip of sand, where milky-red cliffs crumble into a dazzling turquoise sea studded with volcanic rock. Come sunset, it’s just our truck on the beach and a flock of pelicans floating on the dead-still water, like rubber ducks in a jade-coloured bath. We eat refried beans and chicken burritos under the stars, watching a brilliant-white crescent moon rise over the water. That night, I sleep to the sound of the waves lapping gently at the shoreline.

The next morning, I watch the beach come to life from my tent. As the sun rises above the horizon, the sea turns from liquid silver to light pink, illuminating the inside of the tent with a warm glow. A family of pelicans — each one resembling a light aircraft — skim across the water with mouths agape, hoping to catch one of the flying fish backflipping through the air. Eager to join the action, I roll out of the tent and into the sea, plunging head first into the crystal-clear water with my mask and snorkel. Below the surface is an underwater city made of coral and volcanic rock, and colourful fish: I see a long, translucent cornetfish; a tiny cortez rainbow wrasse; and an enormous shoal of California yellowtail, the soft morning light bouncing off their tinfoil-like skin.

It’s tempting to stay longer on this wild, empty beach, lounging on the rocks and floating in the warm turquoise waters as the resident pelicans do. But Mike has packed up camp and started the engine — it’s time to continue our journey through the desert roads of Baja California. “That’s the thing with overlanding,” says Mike, opening the passenger door for me to get in. “There’s always one more road to explore.”